How UU congregations have dropped the ball on democracy
The UUA is undemocratic for various reasons
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) and its annual General Assemblies are supposed to be democratic and use democratic processes. However, I last year detailed in the below link how the UUA and GA are textbook examples of illiberal democracies.
How the Unitarian Universalist Association Became an Illiberal Democracy
This has been in large part due to the UUA and GA leadership. However, recent data shows how much of the fault also lies with individual congregations.
Polls of congregational delegates at the 2024 General Assembly showed that only 39.4% of the congregations represented voted on bylaws changes, only 9.1 percent of the responding congregational delegates were elected, and only 16.1 percent of the delegates were required to have their votes represent the congregation.
This shows that the undemocratic nature of GA and the UUA is in large part due to the congregations not just UUA leadership. This has been a recognized problem since long before the current UUA administration, including by the UUA Board’s 2009 commissioned Fifth Principle Task Report that stated that it is “questionable how well the delegate body represents and is accountable to member congregations.”
The Unitarian Universalist church needs a major overhaul and revitalization of democratic processes, both at the national and congregational levels. The Fifth Principle Task Report wrote, “The future of our UU movement can ill-afford to continue the ways of faux democracy and unaccountable representation that have characterized associational governance, including the content and process of the General Assembly.”
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Thanks for the report from the GA! Interesting data. It may be that, as the old saying goes, the people get the government they deserve.
In a past life, I was a delegate to my Annual Conference in the United Methodist Church. At that time, we were grappling with a controversy that threatened to split the denomination. Emotions ran hot on both sides. I got to be a voting delegate simply because I expressed a willingness to go to the meeting. The Annual Conference was for about half of my state, so no one had to travel very far to get there, and yet I was the only volunteer from my fairly large congregation. My friend in a church across town also became a delegate in the same way, and her church was even larger than mine. For a national gathering, people have to travel a lot farther, so I can imagine that there would be fewer volunteers.
If all delegates were elected by their congregations, then the same people would still go to General Assembly: the people who volunteered. In most cases, electing delegates would be pointless because there would be only one candidate, if there were even that many. I've been a UU for years. I don't have time to go to GA, so I thank those who are willing to serve.
Delegates can accurately represent the will of their congregations only if they know the majority view within their congregation on every issue. To get that information, one would first have to educate the congregations about all of the issues. This requires a level of cooperation I doubt we could get. I am willing to trust our delegates, who are generally very active, involved members of their congregations. They are doing the best they can.